A black journalist is not happy that her minority group has been overlooked in this year’s presentation of Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) Media Awards, a charge that GLAAD denies.

Jasmyne Cannick, a member of the National Association of Black Journalists, says 2004 was “groundbreaking” for blacks in their coverage of homosexual concerns — from black churches supporting or opposing same-sex “marriage,” to the alarming rise in HIV infection rates among blacks, to tackling issues once considered taboo.

“That is why the absence of any substantive recognition of black journalists among this year’s GLAAD nominees is so shocking,” she says. “Maybe GLAAD should add a parenthetical to its mission statement.

“A possibly more accurate mission statement might read ‘promoting and ensuring fair, accurate and inclusive representation of people and events in the media as a means of eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation for people who are not black.’ ”

GLAAD spokeswoman Glennda Testone told this column yesterday that she doesn’t know where Miss Cannick “is coming from,” countering that award nominees represent a “diverse set of stories and voices that GLAAD is very proud to acknowledge.”

She named Derrick Z. Jackson, a black columnist for the Boston Globe, as one such nominee and stressed that “winners have not yet been selected.”

Living with guns

Arguing that criminals, not guns, are the root cause of crime and violence in America, a veteran congressman has reintroduced legislation to ensure the constitutional right of all Americans to own a gun and unload it in defense of self, family and home.

The alternative, says Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, Maryland Republican, is found right here in the nation’s capital, a city that banned the private ownership of handguns and “was rewarded with a higher homicide rate that now ranks amongst the highest in the country.”

The congressman recalls the words of Thomas Jefferson, that gun restrictions “disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.”

Back to school

David Demarest, White House communications director for four years under President George Bush who went on to become senior executive for Visa and BankAmerica, is headed back to college.

That is, to become vice president for public affairs at Stanford University.

“To join a world-class institution like Stanford is both an honor and a privilege,” said Mr. Demarest, whose appointment is effective March 1.

Stanford President John Hennessy says the former White House official will coordinate Stanford’s communications and direct its relationship with government at all levels.

Dog eat cat

We reported recently that investigators of voter fraud in California determined that of the state’s pets illegally registered to vote, cats tend to vote Republican and dogs tend to vote Democrat.

Now, a Maryland physicist writing a “dissertation on dichotomies in the differential equations for universal ‘expectation values’ as a function of time applying to all individual biosystems” is questioning the scientific method and authority of fraud investigators in reaching their conclusions.

“I remind you,” Seamus Finbar of Annapolis writes to Inside the Beltway, of “a higher authority than any statistical poll; the authority of the ubiquitous existentialist Dr. Franz Kafka in his immutable and unchallengeable assessment of all dogs: ‘The totality of all knowledge and of all questions and answers lies in the dog.’

“Frequently I consult my 165 pound Rottweiler-Mastiff when I am stumped in the universal language mathematics. His name is Max,” says the physicist.

“Naturally Max is a Republican,” he continues. “Even his eyes are reddish, not blueish. They reflect the color in each state of our republic last Election Day. Max snarled when he read the title of your [column]: ‘Left-leaning dogs.’ ”

As for cats, Mr. Finbar educates: “Cats live within the boundary conditions of their own solipsistic little world; are unstable and unpredictable even today. They are loyal only to those who feed them and stroke their fur. Seems that cats are Democrats to me.”

 John McCaslin, whose column is nationally syndicated, can be reached at 202/636-3284 or [email protected]